we could have had it all
by Ash Light
Summary: "And he stands there a fool, a broken fool, with arms filled with nothing but failed hopes and the regrets of the past." Their last night together, Bane realises just what he can and cannot protect Talia from. Spoilers for TDKR, Bane/Talia.


**title:** we could have had it all

**summary:** His last night on earth, Bane reflects on what it means to be strong.

**notes: **Alternative title; 'Never Listen To Adele Whilst Thinking About TDKR'. Or, quite possibly, 'Why Is Bane Such An Fascinating Character?' Written after remembering that one perfect shot in the City Hall scene where Bane is so obviously trying not to cry.

-o-

He has never, in all their long years together and apart, reached out a hand to touch her. Oh, he has lifted that little wiry body to safety, boosted her into the air when she needed wings upon her feet, pulled her away from harm; a thousand times he has shielded her, held her, protected her. But he has never done what occupies his mind in the depths of his dreams – reached out one broken, scarred hand and traced his fingers over those features that he has come to realise are beautiful.

Because she is beautiful – her scars are hidden and she remains, torn apart and burnt in the fire. All grace and light and air. So few of these fools understand, when they gaze over their most coveted possessions – porcelain, diamonds, shimmering pearls – that what is truly fair must first be broken and tempered by suffering. But he…he knows what he is. He sees it in the reflections of mirrors, of windows, of the eyes of his men. He is a creature, formed in hell, moulded into metal and machinery. He is no man, he is the beast from the Pit. He is the masked man. He is Bane.

He wears these titles like the kingly robes they are. Society, with its corruption and decadence and its crushing limitations, cannot lay a finger on him. He basks in these words; until he sees her. And sees the face of every man he ever killed with fear drowning in their dying eyes, the face of Ra's al Ghul as he turned him from his door.

_I am not the monster they believe me to be. I shall give them no reason to believe it._ He gives no thought to the fears of men, but she – if he were to think that she would look upon him like that, even for a second….

So he stands at her side, always, like the guardian of the legends, the monster of the pit. He is her most dutiful soldier. And when her fingertips trace against his skin, against the metal mouth that gives him life, he closes his eyes and lets her touch wash over him.

He will, you see, do anything to protect her. Even from himself.

Tonight he stands at the window, watching over this city that tomorrow they will deliver from themselves. Like a suffering animal. When the pain becomes too much, the only thing a man can do is snap its neck. Little people out there, all of them, leading their broken lives. They hobble on like a horse whose rider – cruel, powerful, unthinking – has ridden his beast into the dust, leaving it to stumble onwards, dragging a shattered leg behind them. These are not lives they lead; they merely endure their existence. Simply killing time before they are permitted to die.

He wonders what it would like to live one of their broken lives. To walk, ignorant, without true knowledge of the suffering they lead, of the release they could have. To work in a little job, talk with their little friends. To perhaps bring a woman to some quiet, secluded spot, to entwine their fingers with hers, to whisper meaningless words in her ears.

How strange it would be, to live a broken life.

Ra's al Ghul told him once, in that cold ledge atop the world, where one false step always seemed to threaten to tumble him far back down into the earth, that the League of Shadows was a life of higher things. That they lived not for themselves, not for their loved ones, not even for humanity, but for justice. For the eradication of corruption in their world. Such fallible emotions the rest of the world endured were not to plague them.

The bite of the smaller man's eyes had been ice cold.

_Whatever fantasies you might have concocted while in that place_ – place, place, he never gave it its true name, never spoke of the Pit; and his eyes had slid to where his daughter was talking with the other men and hardened – _abandon them now. Your heart is saved for nothing but justice. Your obedience is saved for no-one but me._

He has taken up the mantle as Ra's al Ghul's successor; he has accepted the burdens and the trials that this has given him. He did not believe this would be so hard.

_I have always protected your daughter_, he had whispered to the dark figure through his torn and swollen mouth, the first day that they had affixed the mask to his lips. His words had sounded cold, metallic, formed by machinery. _I will always be at her side. I have always protected her, and I always will._

Tomorrow, a new day will dawn over the wreckage of Gotham, and a new era will shine over this ruined world they live in. A haven of corruption and crime and misery will be blasted from the face of the earth. And every man of the League of Shadows is ready to die for it.

And every woman.

He knows that this is Ra's al Ghul's destiny, the pinnacle of his work, the release from the decay of Gotham that they have all been working towards. He has waited for this moment for nine long years. Ra's al Ghul wanted this. Ra's al Ghul would not have let anything stand in his way.

Even his own daughter.

He can be Ra's al Ghul's successor in every way but this one thing. For Talia – he doesn't believe he can be this strong.

(_You are a creature of hell_, the man had growled, the first day he'd opened his eyes – bloodshot, squinting in the light, still caked in the dust of the Pit – and seen not death or destruction, but freedom. _You are not like us. For my daughter alone, I have spared you. You want to be one of us? Prove it. Show me you are strong._)

He would break down mountains and wade through oceans if it meant seeing her safe. He would tear worlds apart, for her. _Don't ask me to stand and watch you die. The man who can withstand armies cannot withstand that._

These ordinary people, these little people leading their broken, ignorant lives – he's strode through this city and seen weak, corrupt men he thought capable of only lining their pockets with the blood and sweat of the poor throw themselves before the guns of his men to protect their daughters, their sons. He's watched husbands hurl themselves at mercenaries twice their size just so they will not see their families hurt. An old woman draped all in torn mink and still clutching her diamonds to her chest pleaded with the trials to walk the ice in place of her husband (Crane, fool that he is, took her offer; made the man watch and when she finally fell beneath the ice sent the husband weeping after her; he tells himself he would have spared the woman and _he's not the monster they say he is, he's not, he's not, can't they see he's saving them from themselves?_). Ra's al Ghul would shake his head, spit; are you little better than these pathetic excuses for humanity, Bane, are you that fallible? He is no more than another broken man leading a broken life. Does that make him weaker than Ra's al Ghul, or stronger?

His love for her, it cripples him.

When he turns away, unable to stare out over this wretched city for a moment longer, it is to see he is no longer alone. She wears her hair knotted at the nape of her neck like a youth; wears the same patterned robes of her father. And when she falls into place beside him, the eyes that stare out the window are hungry.

(_They destroyed my father, my friend_, she'd whispered to him that night. The news had spread throughout the world, even to its darkest corners. Not for years had she spoken of her father without bitterness, but now her eyes were white with fury. _That man…_he_ destroyed my father. His most trusted protégée, his greatest achievement. He killed him._

Her forehead had fallen to press against his shoulder, so unbearably close, and even in her darkest hour he had feared to comfort her. His hands, that had crushed so many enemies, felt like useless, lumbering tools that had failed at his sides. He could do nothing but offer her his silence, reverent and sorrowful. And that was not enough, nowhere near enough.

When she next straightened, her eyes were bloodshot with tears, and her mouth diamond-hard. _I want to rip him apart, Bane_, and oh God, but her words had been cold. _I want to see him burn._

And he, the dutiful soldier, kneeling at her side like the loyal dog he is. Had he known, even then? Had he seen the mania take hold of her like a cancer, slowly eating at the woman he loved from the inside out? _Tell me what to do, Talia. Tell me, and I will_.)

Her skin is as white as the snow slowly settling outside on Gotham's tarmac – _he hadn't seen snow until the day they brought him to the League of Shadows, and ruined as he'd been he'd stuck out his tongue to taste; she'd laughed like a child, they'd been so happy_ – and, he does not doubt, just as cold. He can still see her now, his little girl, wandering the confines of their desolate prison, lost in the maze of their own making.

If he was a braver man, a stronger man, he would search her face with his eyes, hunting for that child she once was. But he doesn't, because there's every chance she no longer exists.

_Is she still there?_ he wonders. _My little one, my friend, is she still there, buried beneath the hatred and the pain and the poison of regret, screaming to get out?_

They stand in the silence, watching. Even under their guiding hand, some are still bold enough to brave the streets. He spots a pair even now, a man and a woman hastening through the snow together. Maybe home together, to a home they created with their own hands, to children whose faces they have searched with laughing eyes to find their own features and laugh over, all together. _Would a child of theirs inherit Talia's hatred, his own pain? _They're hurrying together, the fear is peeling off them even from where he's standing, but he still sees the man point up to the falling snow, laugh loudly, press a brazen kiss to his woman's cheek.

This unknown man, this broken creature, has accomplished more in one foolish gesture than he has ever achieved.

Talia's eyes do not touch upon this fleeting pair. Or if they do, it is only with bitterness, a reminder of what her father died to achieve.

She is more like Ra's al Ghul than she realises. She is his true successor.

(_Death, for the Batman_, he had rumbled.

It had been her who had shaken her head. _No. Death for Gotham, all of them._ _My father's destiny must be completed. You speak of the innocent crushed by the rich and the powerful, my friend?_ She had laughed, and in that one sound he had heard her heart breaking._ Do not be fooled. There are no innocents in Gotham_.)

"Tomorrow is the day, my friend," she breathes, as soft as the fall of rain. "Tomorrow, my father's spirit can finally be lain to rest."

When Ra's had told him that he must be strong, had he foreseen this? Had he known – _truly_ known – that this would be the cost? To see the one person he would hold closer than his own life's blood, the woman he would tear hell apart for, destroy herself?

"Talia," he whispers, the first time in an age that anyone has spoken this true name, "stop this. For your own sake. It's not too late."

She continues to watch out the window, looking over this wreck of humanity, this ruined city of poverty and corruption and broken lives. There is not a tremor in her breath, in her being, as she watches. Not for the first time, he cannot help but think that she is the stronger one of them both. And when all is silence, when there is not a movement to be seen save for the gentle drift of the snow through the air, she finally turns and cups his cheek with one tender hand. He imagines a hundred scars, a thousand burns, a million unshed tears, beneath her skin. "Old friend," she whispers, and reaches up to press a kiss softly against his brow. As if she were the protector, and he her little child. "Get some rest."

She stands there before him for a heartbeat too long and then retreats, a ghost before his empty hands. And he stands there a fool, a broken fool, with arms filled with nothing but failed hopes and the regrets of the past.

(_Do not do this_, he had pleaded, the day before she had left for Gotham. _Please. You could rise higher even than your father, renew the league and bring justice to our troubled world. You could do so much. I know you could._

Her smile had been beatific. _Old friend, don't you see? This is all I was ever meant to be._

_No_, he had whispered to the closed door long after she had retreated. _You are so much more._)

He will stand there as Gotham is destroyed, is consumed by fire and poison and the decay of its own perfidy. He will watch as these broken people and their broken lives are brought down into the dust. He will watch their world break and burn around them. And he will watch through the flames as she dies, because he swore an oath that he would always be at her side. That he would never abandon her.

When she was a child he promised that he would protect her, from all those that wished to hurt her, from the hostile world that howled around them, from his own self. He had not realised until it was too late that what she had most needed protection from was herself.

-o-


End file.
